Raging Against the Dying Light: A Systems View of Human Futures

A review of the Cascade Institute’s Polycrisis Core Model Technical Synopsis prompts an uncomfortable question: “are you preparing for collapse, resisting decline, or building alternatives?” The answer, “we need all three: resilience, resistance, and renewal,” with the insight that across the 10,000 possible ‘Hope attractor’ scenarios (0.25% of all possibilities*) “strong democracy” is a cross-cutting feature. This demands “a critical mass of mature, engaged citizens” equipped with “complexity consciousness” and “long-term, relational, ecological and principled perspectives.” All of which requires a shift in our “how we belong to and are in relationship with the world.” Norris calls this ‘worldview:’ something which “unfolds through the living relationship between the inner and outer arcs of our experience.” As such, shifting worldviews “becomes less reformation and more remembering. Not so much building new mental structures but dissolving back into the aliveness that predates all our stories about it.” *yes, it’s a lot like that scene in Avengers: Endgame